What's the difference between simplified Chinese and traditional? This language is mainly called mandarin.
They are standardised Chinese characters that were introduced into Mainland China in around 1956. They are just simpler forms of Chinese characters (a writing system)
here are a few examples in the chart below: * note: the pronunciations in mandarin are the words with the accents. The bracketed words are the meanings.
Simplified Chinese (简体字）
Traditional Chinese （繁體字）
马 mă (horse)
馬 mă （horse）
国 guó （country）
國 guó (country
陈 chén (a surname)
陳 chén (a surname)
汉 hàn (Han Chinese, a ethnic group in China)
漢 hàn (Han Chinese, a ethnic group in China)
You may decide which one you like better but now, only Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan (although some characters have evolved in Japan these are known as kanji in Japanese or 漢字 which also means Han peoples characters) still use traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese characters are now used in mainland China and you will rarely if ever, see traditional Characters.
As you can see from the table above, even though the characters change, the pronunciations do not.
The most common way for writing both traditional and simplified electronically is the pinyin (拼音) method which is built into most computers, 拼音 literally means type sounds. This method is pretty hit and miss if you know how to speak it but don't know what the character looks like, this is because lots of characters have the same sounds and even worse, there are four tones in chinese, and you can't type in the latin bit when typing in pinyin so you have to guess.
The four pronunciations are: * note: I am just using "a" as an example, i am mainly trying to point out the little lines above the "a"s.
ā á ă à
ā
you know when the dentist makes you go "ahh"? not "arghh", "ahhh", if you still can't get it, say "ha" as in haha and go "haaaaaaaa" (If you are British, I'm sorry but i really don't know how to make you say this if you because i know you pronounce "a" as arh sometimes.) an example of a character which has this sound is 他 (tā) which means "him", note "her" is written as 她 and is still pronounced (tā). * note: Mandarin does not have female, male verbs except for the word "him" or "her".
LEARN CHINESE
What's the difference between simplified Chinese and traditional? This language is mainly called mandarin.
They are standardised Chinese characters that were introduced into Mainland China in around 1956. They are just simpler forms of Chinese characters (a writing system)
here are a few examples in the chart below:
* note: the pronunciations in mandarin are the words with the accents. The bracketed words are the meanings.
（繁體字）
（horse）
（country）
(country
(a surname)
(a surname)
(Han Chinese, a ethnic group in China)
(Han Chinese, a ethnic group in China)
You may decide which one you like better but now, only Taiwan, Hong Kong and Japan (although some characters have evolved in Japan these are known as kanji in Japanese or 漢字 which also means Han peoples characters) still use traditional Chinese. Simplified Chinese characters are now used in mainland China and you will rarely if ever, see traditional Characters.
As you can see from the table above, even though the characters change, the pronunciations do not.
The most common way for writing both traditional and simplified electronically is the pinyin (拼音) method which is built into most computers, 拼音 literally means type sounds. This method is pretty hit and miss if you know how to speak it but don't know what the character looks like, this is because lots of characters have the same sounds and even worse, there are four tones in chinese, and you can't type in the latin bit when typing in pinyin so you have to guess.
The four pronunciations are:
* note: I am just using "a" as an example, i am mainly trying to point out the little lines above the "a"s.
ā á ă à
ā
you know when the dentist makes you go "ahh"? not "arghh", "ahhh", if you still can't get it, say "ha" as in haha and go "haaaaaaaa" (If you are British, I'm sorry but i really don't know how to make you say this if you because i know you pronounce "a" as arh sometimes.) an example of a character which has this sound is 他 (tā) which means "him", note "her" is written as 她 and is still pronounced (tā).* note: Mandarin does not have female, male verbs except for the word "him" or "her".